I'm pleased to announce that my course Olfactory Games (Smell and Art) has become a finalist in the 5th Art and Olfaction Awards.
This time I didn't submit my own work but "a course". I never expected that it would make it, to be honest. I appreciate the judges that made a unique decision. Applause to my colleagues at ArtScience, and all the students who participated in the course! We never stop creating new games.
Some of the students will give presentations at the pre event Experimental Scent Summit on 18-19 Apr 2018 in London. Award ceremony (gala) is on the 21st of Apr.
photo: Lucia Guglielmetti
Olfactory Games
Maki Ueda started her olfactory art course Smell and Art in 2009 at the ArtScience Interfaculty. In the course students learn a conceptual and abstract approach to the medium of smell. The use of smell goes beyond the representational use and focuses on its qualities and experience without a need for a narrative or context. The students are challenged to develop olfactory games using this approach. Furthermore, they learn chemical skills by extracting and composing smells to support their creations. The game format challenges our imagination: while we always have limited fragrance materials, we never stop thinking of new games. The Japanese traditional olfactory game Kodo is a good example of this.
Maki Ueda is an olfactory artist who explores olfaction with an abstract and conceptual approach. She was the World Technology Awards finalist in 2009 (category: art), and the Art and Olfaction Awards finalist in 2016 (Sadakichi Award). She is a guest teacher at ArtScience Interfaculty of the Royal Academy of Art and Royal Conservatoire, The Hague, The Netherlands. Maki Ueda is currently based in Okinawa, Japan. www.ueda.nl
Course conception: Maki Ueda
Participating students: June Yu, Lauren Jetty Howells-Green, Kay Churcher, Sophia Bulgakova, Ana Oosting, Abel Fazekas, Ilia Lukovnikov, Vera Khvaleva, Sunna Svavarsdottir, Mischa Lind, Stefano Zucchini, Georgia Kosmatou, Koen de Groot, Tudor Ulrich, Anni Nops, ...and all the students participating in the past courses.
Course given at: ArtScience Interfaculty of the Royal Academy of Art and Royal Conservatoire, The Hague, The Netherlands
MILAN— We are pleased to announce the nominees for the 2018 Art and Olfaction Awards, which we made public in a special press event at Esxence, in Milan, on April 5, 2018.
Awarded to just four perfumes, one experimental scent project and two special awards — the Aftel Award and the Contribution to Scent Culture — a year, The Art and Olfaction Awards are designed to raise public interest and awareness around new developments in independent perfumery. The Awards, established in 2014 by the Institute for Art and Olfaction, are given to outstanding creators in the categories of independent, artisan, and experimental perfume from across the globe, chosen for perfumes released in 2017.
The fifth annual Art and Olfaction Awards events will take place in a public ceremony at The Tabernacle. Continuing the tradition of holding the awards in unique locations in different perfume capitals of the world, the Tabernacleis a Grade II-listed building in Powis Square, Notting Hill, west London, England, built in 1887 as a church and converted into an arts center in the 1970s.
Each Art and Olfaction Award winner will receive The Golden Pear, which continues to cement its status as a prestigious achievement in the perfume world.
As with past years, our panel of esteemed judges includes luminaries from the perfume and art worlds. The members of the Art and Olfaction Awards 2018 jury include: Andy Tauer (Switzerland), Antonio Gardoni (Italy), Christopher Gordon (USA), Grant Osborne (UK), Harald Lubner (Germany), Josh Meyer (USA), Sarah McCartney (UK), Andreas Wilhelm (Switzerland), Bibiana Prival (USA), Dana El Masri (Canada), Dawn Spencer Hurwitz (USA), Matthias Janke (Germany), Ulrike Knöll (Germany), Spyros Drosopoulos (Netherlands), Cristiano Canali (France/Italy), Denyse Beaulieu (France), Helder Suffenplan (Germany), Jeanne Doré (France), Katie Puckrik (England), Luca Turin (Greece), Mark Behnke (USA), Ashraf Osman (Switzerland), Caro Verbeek (The Netherlands), Darin Klein (USA), Sarah Baker (England), Simon Niedenthal (Sweden)
Zoe Crosher (USA), Frederic Jacques (USA), Hall Newbegin (USA), Mandy Aftel (USA)
The Art and Olfaction Awards was founded in 2012 as an independent awards mechanism designed to celebrate innovation and excellence in artisan and independent perfume, and experimentation in scent within arts practices. The Art and Olfaction Awards are a program of The Institute for Art and Olfaction, a 501(c)3 non-profit based in Los Angeles, CA.
The Art and Olfaction Awards could not exist without the generous support of our partners at Lucky Scent / Scent Bar, Pochpac, Perfumers Apprentice, Esxence, Barrister and Mann, Aftelier Perfumes, Nez – La Revue Olfactive, Basenotes, ÇaFleureBon, AutumnSeventy, Perfumed Plume Awards.
The Institute for Art and Olfaction is a 501(c)3 non-profit based in Los Angeles, CA.The Institute for Art and Olfaction advances public and artistic engagement with scent.We do this by initiating and supporting arts projects that utilize the medium of scent, by providing accessible and affordable education in our experimental laboratory as well as in partnership with institutions and community groups, and by celebrating excellence in independent and artisan perfumery through our yearly award mechanism, The Art and Olfaction Awards.Through these efforts, we extend the world of scent beyond its traditional boundaries of appreciation and use.
Smell courses in art academies: fresh perspectives
More and more art students (the Royal College of Art, the Hague, the Royal College of Art, London and PXL Mad, Hasselt) are taught how to engage with new and demanding (museum) audiences through the sense of smell.
The Dutch-Japanese artist Maki Ueda has been teaching the course ”Smell and Art” at the ArtSicence Interfaculty at the Royal Academy of Arts the Hague for almost 10 years now. Ueda choose the olfactory game as a starting point because it requires a creative approach, that is neutral in a sense that the quality and nature of the scents are less important than the sense of smell itself:
“From the beginning I made a conceptual and abstract approach to medium of smell […] We always have limited fragrance materials but we never end up with thinking of new games”
Beside challenging her students to playfully explore the limits of our most neglected sense in order to get acquainted with its characteristics and peculiarities, there is also a practical dimension. Students actually learn the basic skills of perfume making:
“There needs to be a poetic aesthetic dimension too. That is why I teach students a somewhat scientific approach to the medium of smell by extracting and composing, in order to entertain their audience in a creative way”
For centuries, 'kodo' has been played in Japan, the game and art of appreciating incense. For a more intense and realistic experience of games, game-makers in the West nowadays also use scent. In this Odorama edition on 14 February, olfactory artists and designers take scent to a different level. From traditional games to digital olfactory play and virtual reality, this edition plays with scent beyond the everyday experience. Even the smell of dreams - a rarely researched phenomenon will be discussed. https://www.mediamatic.net/en/page/369913/odorama-game-edition
With: Simon Niedenthal, Marie Ehrndal, Maki Ueda, Natali Blugerman. Sudents of ArtScience interfaculty: Sophia Bulgakova, Sunna Svavarsdottir, Lauren Jetty Howells-Green, Georgia Kosmatou and Kay Churcher.
Odorama is curated by Caro Verbeek
Information Odorama: Game Edition Wednesday 14 February Program starts at 20:00 Mediamatic Biotoop, Dijksgracht 6, Amsterdam Tickets: €7,50 pre-sale | €10 door | Students €5 (incl. Administration fee) https://mediamatic.stager.nl/web/tickets/154993
